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Month: December 2014

Review for “True Things About Me” by Deborah Kay Davies
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

This is a simple read, but a hard one. This book is disturbing but engrossing, within a few paragraphs you’re immediately swept up in the tale of a normal woman who, over the course of just a few meetings, becomes completely obsessed with Mr. Wrong. And when I say Mr. Wrong, I literally mean the worst man possible: an amoral criminal who steals from her, abuses her physically, abandons her, and manages to destroy everything in her life in the process—her relationships with family, friends, her sanity, her job.

The chapters are short, there’s even a healthy dose of black humor. There were times that I found I could read on and on and relate wholeheartedly to the main character (she’s never given a name, btw) but there were other times that I was so disgusted by the decisions she makes that I just had to collect my bearings and walk away from her for a bit. You want so badly to reach through the pages and help her, to shake some sense into this poor Brit gal, but she never manages to snap out of the sick spell this dude has put her under. This is one of those books where you are forced to witness a train wreck at 100 miles per hour and there’s nothing you can do but…watch. It’s the darkest side of human nature imaginable, and the main character’s obsession is sad, cruel, and desperate. And it made a very good read.

In reading some of the online reviews, it makes perfect sense that some people hate this book. This book is an uncomfortable read, but one I felt was very necessary. Reading about a situation in which a woman is physically and emotionally abused doesn’t make for the most delightful experience. We like stories where women fight back, walk away, defend themselves–and Davies’ character does none of these things. The writing is lovely and shows how easily blurred the lines are between sanity and insanity, love and indifference, healthy and unhealthy relationships. I would recommend this book. But, be warned. It is a terrifying quick ride off the edge of a cliff. Hopefully you can handle it…

In a nutshell: a book about a young single mother who works at a Dallas steakhouse who does lots of drugs and has sex with lots of guys. Barely got through the first 100 pages of this book before I stopped reading it completely. It wasn’t the drugs or the sex by the main character that bothered me, but the amateurish way in which this book was written. Several reviewers nailed it when they mentioned that it seems like the author is trying too hard (to push an envelope? to be edgy?) and I totally agree. We never get to know Marie, you’re stuck with the feeling like you’re reading a bunch of observations from a detached, hopeless individual. The author doesn’t help her character at all–it’s just pages upon pages of tiresome, stream of consciousness writing that goes nowhere, along with zero character development. There’s nothing raw or beautiful or outstanding here, just a young fucked up girl going about her daily coke fixes and sexual trysts with no rhyme or reason for them. There’s an awful lot of skipping around in time, as well as detailed descriptions that have nothing to do with anything. The lack of quotation marks made the writing incoherent and hard to understand. Certain paragraphs had to be read several times before it made sense. Also, the main character’s voice didn’t seem authentic to me. For a drugged out waitress who barely completed high school, her voice came off as sophisticated as an episode of “Red Shoe Diaries.” I also found it hard to believe that someone as coked up as Marie was could excel so well at her job, even if she was just waiting tables. And the corny title of “Love Me Back?” Don’t make me type another paragraph. Skip this read. Please.

The reason I was drawn to this book was through hearing of its author, Katherine Faw Morris. She’s from a small county in northwest North Carolina, about 80 miles from where I live. The second thing that drew me in was its intriguing title. What could a book called “Young God” possibly be about? Within 10 minutes of reading this debut novel, my question was answered.

The protagonist of this book is 13 year old Nikki, the daughter of a notorious pimp and “the biggest coke dealer in the county.” We never get a proper backstory for Nikki, although it’s hinted that she has spent some time in a group home prior to the opening of the story. At the beginning of the novel Nikki witnesses her mother fall sixty feet into a swimming hole, her body slamming into sharp rocks on the long way down. Nobody cares about it or mourns her, it’s clear early on that emotions have no place in the bleak landscape of this novel. Several pages after her mother’s death, Nikki consoles herself by going home and having sex with her mother’s boyfriend.

It’s a sonorous start for a book, and it doesn’t take long for Morris to completely dismantle your moral center. In the eyes of 13 year old Nikki, events like murder, rape, prostitution, and drug dealing take place with the same normality and regularity as the morning paper. The bizarre father and daughter relationship between Nikki and her father, Coy Hawkins (he’s never addressed as “dad,” but called by his first and last name only throughout the entire book) is at the center of this novel. At one point in the book, Nikki brings her father another young girl, because, of course, virgins make more money. It’s the most horrific case of learning by example, and young Nikki picks up fast. She learns how to buy and sell heroin after seeing her father do it once. And, as we witness for ourselves, she becomes extremely good at it.

Morris does not portray Nikki as someone the reader should pity. Instead, you feel drawn into a connection with her, one that alternates between fear and a creeping sense of foreboding. You feel scared for her, because you know that she probably won’t live to see her fourteenth birthday, and scared of her and her dangerous efficiency. The ending offers the reader no comfort either. While Nikki ‘wins’ in the final pages you still get a sense that her future holds the certainty of more violence, drug dependency, and ultimately, death.

At only about 20,000 words it’s easy to read this book in one sitting. Scenes jump chaotically from one to the next and you’re left wondering what happened in the blank spaces. The writing is sparse and frenzied, with some vignettes going on for several pages and some only consisting of one sentence. The brevity of this book only adds to its raw power, not a single word is wasted here. Morris’ choice in making this book brief was a wise one, if it had been any longer I could not see myself continuing to go back to read it. It’s a one time punch to the gut. And man, I liked it.

Review for “The Orchard of Lost Souls” by Nadifa Mohamed
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Man, this woman can write. I had never heard of Nadifa Mohamed until I wandered into the library one afternoon and casually picked up this book.

The setting of this book is one that I have to admit that I knew very little about, Somalia in the late 1980s. The country was pretty much under a Communist dictatorship until they were attacked by rebel forces with innocent civilians caught in the middle. All of these events foreshadow the widespread famine and the “Black Hawk Down” disaster that most Americans are familiar with, and I enjoyed the fact that even though the book was fiction, it was somewhat of a history lesson as well without being boring or coming off too preachy.

The book is told through Deqo, a young orphan, Kawsar, a well off woman who is treated brutally by the police, and Filsan, a female officer within the ranks of the Somalian armed forces. The book started off a bit slow and difficult to follow at first, but once the voices of three main characters became more distinct I could not put this book down. This book has a quick pace and the stories are fascinating, and Mohamed does an excellent job with making you actually feel like you’re right there in the middle of the village of Hargeisa with her. Of course I don’t want to give the book away, but it was certainly a worthy read for me.

Review for “The Opposite of Loneliness” by Marina Keegan
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

This book behooves me. The tragic backstory of it makes it somewhat critic-proof: to rip it to shreds is just plain heartless, and to sing its praises is to remain oblivious to what’s on the pages. We’re all suckers for tragedy, and that seems to be what draws us to Marina’s book. I gave this book three stars, and honestly, that was being generous.

First off, lemme say that there were some ok pieces in here. Keegan’s fiction is far better than her nonfiction, the latter part of which I largely skipped over. The problem with this book is that Marina is just so…young. There’s a blurb at the beginning of the book from one of Marina’s professors that mentions that the magic in her writing resides in the fact that her works resounds with the voice of a 20 year old. And my God, it does. There’s very little here in the predictable characters and pre-packaged endings to marvel at because it sounds like everyone else’s in a college writing workshop. Her prose isn’t particularly insightful and takes no risks. She has so much room to grow as a writer that I shudder to think of the many young writers out there whose work is far better, who, because they lacked the proper connections, didn’t have a job waiting for them at The New Yorker upon graduation.

In an ideal world, this book would not have ever been published. Because in an ideal world, Marina Keegan would not have died at 22. She would have graduated college, seen her existence beyond the confines of her privileged upbringing, and she would have grown out of her wide-eyed, precocious fascination with the real world. And I can’t blame her, my writing was probably this trite at 22 also. I imagine someone far younger than me would love this, so I read this fairly quickly and returned it to the library.

I didn’t win this year. Even though I am slightly crushed, I think I am ok with this.

My intentions were good. I planned for several weeks before–my plot, my characters. I started on midnight November 1st and went about writing MY novel. And it worked at first. Despite my work schedule, motherly duties, the general business of running my household I set aside time for my endeavor. Words flew from my fingers. I was killing it.

I wrote with wild abandon up to the second week, and then something happened.

I began to lose steam. Entering word counts, following schedules, typing X amount of words per day. It began to feel more like a chore than an enjoyable experience. So I stopped recording the word count and stressing about the looming date of November 30.

I am still writing. My novel isn’t dead. But it won’t be finished within the span of 30 days. While I applaud NaNoWriMo’s efforts in just getting people’s off their asses and writing, their 30 day window cannot contain me.

My novel will be finished when I need to finish it. It may or may not have 50,000 words, but it’s cool. It may not make sense either, but that’s ok too. I am writing, and that’s what’s important.